The first thing that strikes you about Cecilia Bartoli, besides her resemblance to a madonna by Titian, is how genuinely nice she is. No prima-donna airs. No diva fits. No act.
The hottest young singer in the world seems as direct, spontaneous and unspoiled by fame as her press kit would have you believe.
Surely one of the reasons is that fame came early to Bartoli, now a superstar at 29. Being relatively new to the game, the mezzo-soprano has had the temerity to rewrite the rules to suit her decidedly down-to-earth vision of herself as an artist and a woman.
Bartoli is sipping mineral water at a North Michigan Avenue restaurant. Chicago, she explains, is the first stopover in a four-day train trip she is making from New York to San Diego, where she is to sing a recital. Bartoli, who has a phobia about flying, is eagerly awaiting her first glimpse of the Rocky Mountains and the Southwest deserts.
The restaurant owner, an avowed fan, stops by the table to greet her in her native Italian. Throughout our conversation she laughs eagerly and exudes enough charm to melt several polar ice caps. When she is cornered by the photographer’s zoom lens, she cowers in mock alarm. Her mother, Silvana, who often goes along on concert tours, sits silently nearby.
Seeing her thus, you are reminded this is the same Cecilia Bartoli who, when she was in Houston to sing Rossini’s “Barber of Seville” a few years ago, spent her off-nights kicking up her heels in cowboy boots at a country-and-western bar.
The palpable joy Bartoli takes from life she gives back through her singing. Her voice is a wonder, a coloratura mezzo that spans a 3 1/2-octave range with what the Italians call agilita. Although the voice is not large, it is as rich and dark as a cup of espresso, with a flexibility, evenness and naturalness of expression that make her an ideal interpreter of Rossini and Mozart.
And there is always a “face” behind everything Bartoli sings. “She really sings from the eyes as well as the throat,” says Rodney Milnes, editor of Opera magazine. Which helps to explain why concert and opera audiences adore her and why her recordings have made her London Records’ top-selling singer, after Luciano Pavarotti.
London Records reports sales of more than 1 million Bartoli albums over the last six years in the U.S. alone. The initial dealer solicitation for her latest album, “Cecilia Bartoli: A Portrait,” which hit the stores last week, was 100,000 copies, about par for a pop icon but rare for a classical artist.
What makes Bartoli’s rise to the top so unusual is that she has yet to perform in most of the world’s leading opera houses, nor does she appear in any great hurry to do so. She and her manager, Jack Mastroianni, weigh each offer carefully to decide which roles are right for her voice and temperament at this stage of her development. She says they have become very adept at saying no.
Indeed, thus far Bartoli has stuck fairly closely to her specialties, Mozart and bel canto, and she sees no need for an immediate change. “I feel I am a daughter of the 18th Century,” the singer declares, flashing the smile that has helped make her such an endearing Rossini heroine onstage.
This month she is presenting recitals on the West Coast before returning to Houston to sing the title role in Rossini’s “La Cenerentola,” beginning Oct. 27. In February she will make her Metropolitan Opera debut as Despina in a new production of Mozart’s “Cosi fan tutte” before singing a recital in March at Carnegie Recital Hall, with Andras Schiff at the piano. Sadly, and incomprehensibly, she has not been engaged for a single appearance in Chicago this season.
“It is important to know what is possible for my voice right now and what isn’t,” the mezzo-soprano explains. “It depends on the operas, the roles and the size of the theaters. To sing `Cosi’ at the Met is one thing; to sing `Carmen’ there is quite another. This is the time in my life for `Cosi.’ It’s not time for `Carmen.’ “
Her refusal to take on anything that might damage her relatively light voice hasn’t deterred several theaters from dangling the role of Bizet’s gypsy femme fatale in front of her. They will just have to wait.
Singing came readily to Bartoli, the daughter of a tenor and a soprano who used to perform at the Rome Opera. Her summer playground, she says, was the “Aida” set at the Baths of Caracalla. Young Cecilia used to sing around the house “very loudly” with her two siblings. She made her debut at the Rome Opera as the offstage voice of the shepherd in “Tosca.” For a time her talent as a flamenco dancer nearly lured her away from singing, until she realized she would not be able to make much of a living at it in Italy. Studying flamenco would, however, help her enormously later on when it came to learning body movement for the operatic stage.
She took her first serious voice lessons with her mother, and it was she who gave Bartoli her rock-solid technique. She enrolled in Rome’s Accademia di Santa Cecilia and made her Italian television debut on a young-artists showcase program. At 19 she was “discovered” when she appeared on a French television tribute to Maria Callas. Daniel Barenboim, then conductor of the Orchestre de Paris, saw her and was struck by “her wonderful musicality.” He asked her to audition for “Cosi.” Eventually she sang Dorabella and Cherubino in his Chicago Symphony Orchestra performances of the Mozart/Da Ponte opera cycle here in 1992.
From the beginning, “Cecilia knew everything that cannot be taught about music,” Barenboim told Newsweek. The quality he most admires about her is her musical fanaticism. “She won’t stop until she gets to the bottom of things. In rehearsal, you not only hear her work something out, but see it in her face and body language.”
The late Herbert von Karajan caught the TV broadcast as well, coached her for almost a year in Bach’s B-Minor Mass (earmarked for the Salzburg Easter Festival in 1990) but died before the work could be performed.
Eventually Bartoli came to the attention of Christopher Raeburn, now her producer at London Records and one of her most trusted advisers along with her mother, Mastroianni and conductor-pianist Gyorgy Fischer. Raeburn was astonished to find in her a fully developed artist, at 24. But it wasn’t only the quality of her voice that struck him so forcibly–it was her captivating presence. London Records wasted no time in signing her.
Bartoli’s first recording, as Rosina in Rossini’s “Il Barbiere di Siviglia,” made her the darling of the music world. But sudden celebrity didn’t go to her head. “It was a big surprise for everybody, a Cinderella story,” the singer says. “But Cinderella married the prince, so . . .” She giggles. “My life has changed a little bit. I travel a lot now. I don’t have a 9-to-5 routine.” She sighs. “Someday I would like to follow a regular routine. It’s coming, I’m sure!”
When Mastroianni met Bartoli in 1987, he says, he found an artist who already knew where she was headed musically and how to get there. Bartoli says she owes much of that to her mother. To this day Silvana is a formidable influence on Cecilia. Raeburn calls her Cecilia’s Rock of Gibraltar, realizing in her daughter’s career many of her own unfulfilled musical ambitions.
“I don’t believe it when people say, `You have a natural voice, you don’t need a teacher.’ This is not true,” Bartoli says. “If we want to be good singers, we must have good teachers and a good relationship with them. Without them we cannot really judge how we are singing.”
In fact, it’s this combination of Bartoli’s savvy practicality and the shrewd protectiveness of her handlers that has saved her from being thrown to the wolves–a fate that has befallen more than a few young vocal talents marked for stardom. Thus far Bartoli wisely has concentrated on singing recitals, concerts and recordings, taking on a select handful of less-strenuous opera roles under conductors she knows and trusts, such as Barenboim, Fischer, Claudio Abbado, Nikolaus Harnoncourt, Riccardo Muti and Riccardo Chailly.
In fact, virtually all of Bartoli’s operatic ventures have been in comparatively intimate theaters such as Zurich, Milan’s La Scala and Bologna’s Teatro Comunale–no danger in such venues of Bartoli’s being overshadowed by singers with bigger instruments.
“Cecilia’s voice is relatively light,” Raeburn has observed. “That doesn’t mean she doesn’t have a very rich voice. But she’s not like a battleship.”
Bartoli admits the pressures of her escalating career have made it hard to sustain much of a personal life. There is no special man in her world at the moment, though she hopes one day to marry and raise a family. “Life is too short to sing all the time,” she says.
“Next year and in 1997 I am allowing myself more time between engagements, to study, to relax, to have a private life. This is very important for me. It’s difficult, because now there are more and more requests for me to sing. You can lose a lot of money by refusing engagements!”
Bartoli shrugs. “But money comes and goes. At this stage of my life I’m happy to have the freedom to choose.”
Spoken like a true Rossini heroine.
A CECILIA BARTOLI DISCOGRAPHY
Cecilia Bartoli’s recordings represent a trusty roadmap through the Italian bel canto and Mozart repertoire that is her specialty. Unless otherwise noted, all recordings are available on CD and cassette on the London label.
“If You Love Me (Se tu m’ami).” 18th Century Italian songs by A. Scarlatti, Paisiello and others. Gyorgy Fischer, piano. 436267.
“The Impatient Lover.” Italian songs by Beethoven, Schubert, Mozart and Haydn. Andras Schiff, piano. 440297.
“Rossini Heroines.” La Fenice Theatre Orchestra and Chorus, Ion Marin, conductor. 436075.
“Rossini opera arias.” Vienna Volksoper Orchestra, Giuseppe Patane, conductor. 435430.
“Mozart: La Clemenza di Tito.” Academy of Ancient Music Orchestra and Chorus, Christopher Hogwood, conductor. L’Oiseau-Lyre 444131 (two CDs).
“Mozart Portraits.” Opera and concert arias. Vienna Chamber Orchestra, Gyorgy Fischer, conductor. 430513.
“Rossini: La Cenerentola.” With William Matteuzzi, Alessandro Corbelli, Enzo Dara and Michele Pertusi. Orchestra and Chorus of the Bologna Municipal Theatre, Riccardo Chailly, conductor. 436902 (two CDs).
“Rossini: Il barbiere di Siviglia.” With Leo Nucci, Matteuzzi, Enrico Fissore and Paata Burchuladze. Orchestra and Chorus of the Bologna Municipal Theatre, Patane, conductor. 425520 (three CDs).
